The Church looks like a heritage society on the hop

Wednesday 2 November 2011 12:33 BST

Come off the fence: Occupy protesters hectoring the Rt Rev Graeme Knowles and the Bishop of London

They never stood a chance, really. On one side were the senior clerics of one of the world's most famous and instantly recognisable churches, enshrining 2,000 years of Christian culture and the corporate might of the City of London. On the other was an encampment of media-savvy, querulous protesters, wearing Guy Fawkes masks, partying, and spouting adolescent slogans about the wickedness of modern life. No: against the vapid but television-friendly activists of Occupy London, the custodians of St Paul's Cathedral didn't have a prayer (so to speak).

This confrontation has been as emblematic of its time as the miners' strike was of the mid-Eighties. Margaret Thatcher's great conflict with Arthur Scargill captured the clash between the rule of law and union militancy. The battle of Paternoster Square has been a battle fought on 21st-century lines between an institution totally lacking in self-confidence and a gang of protesters completely at ease in the modern media world. This is the revolution as enacted by the health and safety generation who (thermal imagery suggests) go home at night. Say what you like about the Greenham Common women: they stayed in their tents when it got dark.

Yet the activists grasped much more quickly than the cathedral authorities that this was street theatre, not conventional politics. That is why - so far - they have won hands down. So what if the original target of the Occupy London protest was the financial sector rather than St Paul's? A stand-off is a stand-off. For this lot, the verb "to oppose" is intransitive. In spite of the banners and the soundbites, they are not really fighting anything specific. The objective has always been media victory rather than social change.

Throughout, the Church has looked powerless and embarrassed. It is welcome news that Ken Costa, the wise and erudite former investment banker, is to head an initiative "reconnecting the financial with the ethical". But this appointment contrasts sharply with the dithering that has otherwise characterised the response of the ecclesiastical authorities. The resignations of the cathedral's canon chancellor, Giles Fraser, and part-time chaplain, Fraser Dyer, should have been warning enough that stronger leadership was required, from outside the cathedral precincts if necessary - and it was at that point that Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, or, if necessary, the Archbishop of Canterbury, should have stepped in to prevent the situation spiralling out of control.

Instead, the cathedral dean, the Rt Rev Graeme Knowles, became the latest casualty of the confrontation on Monday - an absurdly disproportionate outcome to the dispute. Nominally, Dr Chartres has now taken charge, although his intervention has so far been characterised by flamboyant appeasement rather than steely leadership: the legal procedures to evict the protesters have been suspended, and - at the time of writing - Occupy London's victory appears complete. And the Archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams? He stamped his authority on the crisis by writing an article for today's FT in which he salutes "the moral agenda" of the protesters and calls for a "Robin Hood tax" on financial transactions. The activists must be pinching themselves.

Why has a local protest about City financiers led to the humiliation of the entire Anglican hierarchy? Part of the answer is ideological. Whatever its claims to political neutrality, the modern Church of England cannot help tilting towards the liberal Left - a tendency I have described elsewhere as "Pew Labour". In June, for example, Dr Williams guest-edited the New Statesman, accusing the Coalition of committing the nation "to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted". Nothing intrinsically wrong with that - he is entitled to his opinion, after all. The trouble is that the specific argument is typical of a generic inclination.

In the case of the Occupy London encampment, this translated into the paralysis of the cathedral authorities when confronted by the protesters. What if the camp had been formed by UKIP or the Countryside Alliance? Would the cathedral authorities have been quite so anxious or confused?

"I could imagine Jesus being born in the camp," declared Giles Fraser. This is the Church of England at its most sentimentally daft: seeing every "gap yah" trustafarian with dreadlocks sitting in the lotus position outside his tent as the messiah reborn. Face it, Canon Fraser: he's not the messiah - he's a very naughty boy.The truth is that Leftish protest movements make the Church of England's most senior clerics feel a mixture of sympathy and chronic inadequacy. They fret that Occupy London is filling the moral space that they have vacated. They worry that forcible eviction would embroil the cathedral in a sort of Tiananmen-lite.

As a consequence, the church authorities have ended up looking like a heritage society caught on the hop rather than a moral force engaging with the society of which the cathedral is a part. If the tale of the St Paul's encampment is a parable, it is a parable about institutional ossification and a hierarchy that lacks purpose and authority. With his books and broadcasts, the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, makes a greater impact upon contemporary debate than the entire Anglican establishment. This partly reflects the sheer scale of his intellect; but it is also a measure of robust, generous confidence. In Paternoster Square, teenage rebellion has trumped the national church without breaking sweat.

When Sir Christopher Wren started work on his glorious cathedral, he found a single piece of stone bearing the word Resurgam: "I will arise". The architect placed the stone at the heart of his design. St Paul's, an awesome symbol of London life and legend as well as Christian faith, will indeed rise again. But it will do so with a different cohort of custodians who not only mean what they say, but know what they want to say in the first place.